Academic closures, mergers, and cuts: July 2024 edition

Greetings from the start of August. This week I’ve been home, here in Manassas, and that’s meant some pretty substantial heat, with temperatures in the upper 90s and heat index cracking 101.

Today’s post covers another kind of heat, how colleges and universities have been cutting programs, cutting faculty and staff, merging institutions, or shutting down campuses completely. I’ve been blogging this theme for months now (March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June), partly as evidence for some points in the book I’m writing. Let’s look at how July wielded the knife.

1 Closing colleges and universities

Clarks Summit University (private; Baptist; Pennsylvania) will close before fall semester begins. The reasons are financial, driven by enrollment which dropped by one half in recent years, according to Inside Higher Ed. A summer furlough of all employees and a fundraising drive didn’t turn the ship around. The shut down announcement is the institution’s main page:

Northwestern College (for-profit; Illinois) announced it would shut down for financial reasons. The college started 122 years ago.

The Rocky Mountain School of Photography (private; Montana; no Wikipedia entry?) closed up shop. One local account cites rising costs and…